I had finally added a WordPress Classified Plugin for IVR Marketplace. This feature in www.ivrsworld.com will allow readers to post their IVR services, Ask Experts, Advertise IVR Services, IVR Development Tools, IVR Requirement.

Looking for a IVR projects? Trying to find a IVR consultant? Looking for an CTI Board? Looking for getting CTI Board on rent ? Browse our classifieds. Have a IVR project to advertise? Looking for freelancing IVR Work ? Post a classified ad.

IVR Marketplace

1. Anyone can place an advertisement by just clicking on Place Ad. One does not need to be a registered member of www.ivrsworld.com to post an advertisement. We request to use a valid email id as that will be required for future editing. All advertisements are approved by administrator.

2. All advertisements can be browsed by, replied by Browse Ad. Anyone can reply, comment on any advertisement.

I hope this feature will be useful for many IVR users.

Voice based value added service is known as voice portal. This is good revenue source for both mobile and land line telecom companies. Just like SMS Portal, voice portal also provides similar services but accessed through IVR. With advent of voice enabled menu using speech recognition technique, IVR has become very popular as well as user-friendly application for both mobile and land line subscribers.
IVR can be thought as platform to deliver content to users. The content may be anything, from latest news to mobile ring tone. I have written about Technical challenges and commercial challenges in a voice portal in my previous posts. IVR as content delivery platform has advantage:-

1. Its is easy to dial using the keypad while SMS is not easy to type on mobile phones.
2. Few contents are better delivered on IVR. For example, ring tone can be heard on IVR before it is downloaded by user.
3. It is limited by number of characters like in SMS. For example, complete news can be heard on IVR. Same goes for other contents like jokes, breaking news, etc.
4. IVR can be used by any kind of mobile phone instrument. Other content delivery platform like WAP does not work on low cost mobile phones. SMS does not work on many land line telephone instruments. It may be a major factor in a price sensitive market like India where maximum mobile subscribers use low cost handsets. India is a huge mobile market with more than 400million mobile subscribers.

Here I would like to list few services which are popular in India:-

1. Listening to Music
I find it amusing that people listen to music on mobile phone in this era of Ipod, FM Radio etc.! The main reason is, FM is available in major cities in India. The initial investment is high for many Indians for IPod or MP3 players. But many IVR VAS players in India has provided option to listen unlimited songs with a monthly subscription of paltry Rs. 30.
2. Astrology
3. Contests
4. Jokes
Yes, people do hear jokes on IVR!
5. Shayeri
This is an interesting application for IVR VAS.

Without doubt, interactive voice response (IVR) has become the ubiquitous technology in telecommunications applications. IVR solutions have a myriad of uses that are mostly taken for granted, however, the essence of an IVR system is its ability to offer ‘self-service’ for the user, thus it can help to reduce cost and improve the customer experience.

Since introducing the world’s first ‘all-in-one’ voice board in 1998, Aculab has been setting the standard of enabling technology components – e.g., CTI cards – for IVR applications. Whatever your needs for advanced IVR functionality, Aculab has the media processing technology and APIs – voice, fax, call progress, etc. – to drive your success.

Beneficially, Aculab is able to offer a choice; from its range of IP-centric, DSP-based Prosody X boards to its host-based (SoftDSP or HMP) option, Prosody S. And you can use Prosody X for converged or mixed IP/TDM environments, where you still need E1 or T1 PSTN connectivity.

Additionally, Aculab\’s VoiceXML/CCXML interpreter set offers a powerful and scalable design option for platform vendors and service providers alike. It is the fastest, most cost-effective, high performance solution available today, which is an effective combination in any language.

IVR system features and capacities vary depending on the market segments they target. Small to medium enterprises (SMEs) may look to enhance their IP-PBX with an IVR-based auto-attendant using Prosody S, while larger companies will require a Prosody X board-based solution for a hybrid contact centre or voice portal, perhaps also using automatic speech recognition (ASR) and text-to-speech (TTS). Carriers and service providers need IVR to provide a wide range of subscriber messaging and large scale, hosted or VAS and mobile VAS service offerings. And, undoubtedly, TEMs (of all descriptions; Tier 1, Tier 2, etc.) and platform vendors supplying these user communities will also benefit from Aculab’s board and software options.

Check out Aculab at http://www.aculab.com/solutions/IVR-solutions.asp

What is UMS ( Unified Messaging System) ?
In one sentence, UMS can be defined as a system that provides phone subscribers with the ability to access, read and reply all their messages in whatever form from any terminal (whether telephony-based, Internet-based or both) that may be available. Message types are normally, Email, Voice Mail, Fax and SMS. UMS provides a single mailbox to store all all these messages and then access these messages from mobile phone, telephone, website or as SMS on mobile phone! For more, please visit Niche Tech Services NTS1BOX product page.

With the above description, it is obvious that IVR Software will play the main part in a UMS Solution. In fact, one can view UMS as enhancement of IVR Software.

1. Accessing ‘Message’, either Email, SMS, Voice Mail or FAX one has to use an IVR Software. This IVR software will be programmed to give options to read Email, SMS, Voice Mail or FAX to a caller.

2. Depending on the choice, IVR Software will retrieve Email, read it out to caller using TTS(Text To Speech). It will also give option to reply by the caller as a voice message, which will be stored as Audio File ( WAV File) and replied to sender as email attachement. For Option to download as SMS, IVR Software will trigger SMS Module to send out the email as SMS.

3. For Voice Mail, its a straight forward retrieval and playback of stored messages.

4. IVR Software can also send and receive FAX! The CTI Card has to have FAX support.

5. For SMS again, SMS texts would be read out to the caller and a voice message would be sent as reply to the SMS sender.

Best part of an UMS is, for every incoming message, be it SMS, Email, FAX or Voice Mail, a subscriber can be alerted by a outbound IVR Software.

UMS can be an extension of Voice Portal Software. Voice Portal operators can easily upgrade their IVR Software to give functionality of UMS. This can be new revenue earner for voice portal.

So, IVR Software can be extended to serve as UMS.

Speech recognition in IVRS has become more of a necessity after mobile phones have arrived. POTS ( Plain Old Telephone ) System have telephone instrument with proper keypad along with head-set. Procedure of calling is suitable for pressing DTMF based interaction with IVR System!

You normally lift the headset with left hand, dial pressing keys on telephone instrument using your right hand. So, when IVR is connected and you are listening to the voices by IVR System as well as pressing keys! While in a mobile phone, the tiny instrument itself is head-set, so when you are listening to IVR instructions, it is almost impossible to press keys without removing from your ear and looking at keys! The one solution is to use ear-phone or blue-tooth powered wireless headset!

Most probably, this has given prompted IVR developers as well as CTI vendors to come out with speech recognition for IVR Input. Though, speech recognition has evolved a lot, still speech recognition can not claim to perform 100%. This happens mainly because of pronunciation, accents of language from one region to another.

There are many speech recognition engines available. Nuance, Loquendo, Microsoft, Spinvox etc. are few companies which provide speech recognition engines on various technologies.

IVR with speech recognition capabilities are supposed to more advanced and suitable for mobile user, but it is actually very difficult to predict if the IVR application and speech engine will be able to recognise speech command properly. But IVR with Speech Recognition has been on the rise and every IVR Company now a days provide speech recognition. CTI vendors too support speech recognition in their hardware.

But still many people like me, will prefer to use DTMF for giving command to IVR as it sounds more technical. Most probably some people will take time get used to the idea of commanding some invisible machines by speaking!

After more searches and after getting comments about more CTI Companies,

[With the price hike in Dialogic, many of my clients have been asking me about alternatives. I have also started searching for some alternatives of Dialogic. I will be building a list and comparative article on them. Kindly send me any company.]

Here is another company I am looking at:-

Synaway Information Engineering Co. Ltd

About the company :

Synway specializes in designing hardware/software building blocks for use in Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) applications, such as IVR,Call Center, Recording, Unified Messaging and Value-Added Service (VAS) in both PSTN and IP environments. Our products feature rich media processing resources including Fax, conferencing, Codecs, echo cancellation and call control with an array of signaling capability for SIP, SS7 packets, ISDN and CAS in worldwide IP/T1/E1/Analog networks.

In the past two decades, Synway has attracted CTI solution providers through superior service, field-proven products and matchless pricing for the highly reliable Telco and enterprise communications platform. With internally coordinatedMaximal Support Value (MSV) System, our service engineers provide pre-sales consulting, development support, and after-sales service, so you can monitor the service process effortlessly. Synway’s competitive pricing will ensure your matchless competitiveness in any project bidding or distribution-channel expansion globally. Our products have been applied by hundreds of customers worldwide.

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In fact, I am trying to configure and handle few calls using a card from them HD-240 using SS7 and ISUP.

After more searches and after getting comments about more CTI Companies,

[With the price hike in Dialogic, many of my clients have been asking me about alternatives. I have also started searching for some alternatives of Dialogic. I will be building a list and comparative article on them. Kindly send me any company.]

Here is another company I am looking at
TelcoBridges :

TelcoBridges is an innovative provider of enabling communications technologies for telecom system integrators, solution providers, and telecom equipment manufacturers worldwide.

TelcoBridges’ hardware and software products support VoIP, TDM, and IVR technologies enabling the rapid development of carrier-grade telecom systems.

Founded in 2002, TelcoBridges and its customers have deployed systems in more than 30 countries for some of the world’s largest telecom operators.

Technology
Supporting the most widely accepted industry standards and protocols, our technology is integrated by our system integration partners to build the industry’s most cost-effective, high-performance telecommunications systems marketed to fixed, mobile, and IP-based telecom operators.

Architecture
TelcoBridges delivers scalability, high-availability and unmatched redundancy into the design of carrier-grade telecom solutions by its solution partners.

Platform
Using our development tools our customers minimize development costs and reduce their development cycle, bringing innovative telecom solutions to market in record time.

Headquarters
Headquartered in Montreal, Canada, where TelcoBridges performs its R&D and production activities, the company has further sales representation and technical support staff in three regional offices: USA (San Jose, CA), China (Hong Kong), and Korea (Seoul).